Canadian Scientists and Organizations Honoured for Their Impact by University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab

October 25, 2017

Toronto, ON – Organizations and researchers whose work has had an impact on Canadian competitiveness in the areas of science, technology and commerce have been honoured with the third annual awards presented by the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

The awards are designed around the primary ingredients in the prevailing models of economics growth: labour, capital and ideas.

The 2017 recipient of the Capital Award is the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) which provides non-dilutive capital to small and medium sized enterprises in Canada to accelerate their technological innovation. Many Canadian high-tech entrepreneurs point to the critical role IRAP played in their development.

The 2017 recipient of the Labour award is the Perimeter Institute, an independent research center in foundational theoretical physics in Waterloo, Ontario. Its mission is to advance the understanding of the universe at the most fundamental level. The Institute trains the next generation of physicists through university courses, summer research projects, and other research opportunities for PhD students and graduate fellows.

The 2017 joint recipients of Ideas award are Doina Precup, an associate professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill University, and Graham Collinridge, a UofT professor, who holds the Ernest B. and Leonard B. Smith Chair in the Department of Physiology. Both recipients have advanced our knowledge of learning; Prof. Precup in the area of reinforcement learning and Prof. Collingridge on the physiology of memory and learning. Their contributions have laid foundations for further research on how machines and brains enhance their performance through learning.

The awards will be presented at a conference at the Rotman School on October 26 hosted by the Creative Destruction Lab, in collaboration with Bloomberg Beta, on the economics of artificial intelligence called “Machine Learning and the Market for Intelligence.” The focus of the conference is on the business opportunities and economic implications arising from recent advances in machine intelligence. The presenting sponsor of the conference is Scotiabank and the knowledge partner is McKinsey & Company. Further details on the conference are online at www.marketforintelligence.com.

The Creative Destruction Lab is a seed-stage program for massively scalable, science-based ventures. It employs a unique, objectives-focused coaching process to help founders commercialize advances in science and technology. The Lab also provides experiential learning to Rotman MBA students through year-long courses where students work alongside the Lab’s Fellows and venture founders, giving them a unique chance to learn how to evaluate, finance, and manage technology businesses.

Graduates of the Lab include Thalmic Labs (Waterloo), Atomwise (San Francisco), Deep Genomics (Toronto), Nymi (Toronto), Automat (Montreal), Kyndi (Palo Alto), and Heuritech (Paris). The Creative Destruction Lab was founded in 2012 at the Rotman School and now has additional programs at the UBC Sauder School of Business, the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, HEC Montreal and Dalhousie University. A new program will launch at the Stern School of Business at New York University in 2018. This year the Lab in Toronto launched a new program focused on the creation of quantum machine learning startups. More information is available at www.creativedestructionlab.com.

The Rotman School of Management is located in the heart of Canada’s commercial and cultural capital and is part of the University of Toronto, one of the world’s top 20 research universities. The Rotman School fosters a new way to think that enables our graduates to tackle today’s global business and societal challenges. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca.